Playwrights festival has fresh, varied lineup

The Spokane Civic Theatre’s annual Playwrights Forum Festival is rewarding, but not in the same ways as most other evenings of theater.

Ideas and characters come alive for the first time. There’s a feeling of creative freshness. The festival also has the appeal of variety – if one short play doesn’t suit, just wait 20 minutes for the next one.

This year’s festival is particularly satisfying because of a relatively strong and varied lineup. The best are strong and insightful, and even the relative misfires are intriguing.

“Bookstore,” by Stephen Peace, of Stone Mountain, Ga., begins with an interesting conceit. A prim woman wearing gloves (Ann Selcoe) walks into a bookstore and requests the bestseller, “1,001 Ways to Kill Someone and Get Away With It.”

The officious clerk (Jackie Davis) forces the woman to sign a series of disclaimers before even letting her see the book. The encounter gets increasingly absurd, and the woman’s motives in buying the book seem increasingly suspicious. The clerk eventually does a background check before letting the woman walk off with the book.

Obviously, Peace is commenting on American culture. Is it about censorship? Violence? Gun control? The flawed legal system?

But I could never pinpoint exactly what he was trying to say. The piece ends so ambiguously, I’m still a bit lost.

“Touch Tones,” by Daniel Edmiston, of Post Falls, was far clearer. This well-observed one-act chronicles a half-hour in the life of a frazzled espresso shop worker (Sandy Browning) whose life consists of endlessly ringing phones. If her ex-husband isn’t calling, her boss is.

Worse, though, is the fact that her customers always seem to be on their cell phones. One salesman, in headset, is continually bellowing, “Bill Bell, Glad To Sell!”

Edmiston provides a nice romantic plot involving the barista and a TV reporter. Yet even better is this play’s depiction of a new kind of American social interaction – or should we say, inaction – in which the cell phone becomes a way of isolating people instead of connecting them. Edmiston makes these points gracefully and with wit.

“Work and Play,” by Michael E. Wolfson, of North Hollywood, Calif., consists entirely of an encounter between a businessman (Paul Spencer) and a brazen babe (Kate Houston) who pulls up a bar stool and proceeds to come on to him shamelessly.

Is she a hooker? Or just an uncommonly aggressive flirt? Turns out, she’s something else entirely. The banter and sexual tension between the two is entertaining, but the surprise is a bit of a cliché, as surprises go.

The above three are part of Rotation A, which will be shown again tonight and June 25.

Rotation B, which will be seen again on June 24 and 26, consist of only two short plays.

The first, “The Ghost In High Heels,” by Carl L. Williams, of Houston, is a kind of Noel Coward ghost story. A young couple arrives at their beach bungalow to discover the previous tenant, dead several months, haunting the place.

The theme is not exactly original – she needs to solve the mystery of her death before she can rest easy. Yet Williams provides some amusing dialogue and a clever twist involving the pizza delivery boy.

Much stronger is “The Death of Socrates in America,” by Thomas Pierce, of Seattle, a well-conceived and well-sustained satirical allegory on “homeland security,” based on the story of Socrates. A modern American military lawyer has just convicted Socrates – here described as a spouter of sedition in a Starbucks – of security violations. The bulk of the play consists of the lawyer and his friend, sitting over cocktails, conducting a post-mortem of the case. For instance, they can only shake their heads over why he chose death by hemlock over detention in Guantanamo.

Generally, the quality of the productions is not an issue – the play is the thing. In this case, however, one of the actors seemed to have gotten lost in the dialogue, making a judgment of the script hard to make. Still, enough of it was clear to make it obvious that Pierce’s play is a sharp and clever satire on our present national climate.

The Playwright’s Forum Festival continues through June 26. Call 325-2507 for tickets.